City of Brass

Obama: “I screwed up.”

Indeed, change has come to the White House. Our President is able to admit to mistakes:

Barack
Obama, the US president, has admited he made a “mistake” following the
withdrawal of his nominee for US health secretary amid a controversy
over unpaid taxes.

“I screwed up”, he told NBC news on Tuesday after Tom Daschle,
whom the US president also wanted as White House health “czar”,
withdrew his nomination following reports he had not paid $140,000 in
taxes

…

Obama on Tuesday took
responsibility for the errors, telling NBC news he had failed to
anticipate the problem and should “own up to my mistake”.

“I
don’t want to send a message to the American people that there are two
sets of standards, one for powerful people, and one for ordinary folks
who are working every day and paying their taxes,” Obama later told CNN.

President Bush, who four years ago couldn’t identify a single mistake
by his administration, on Monday ticked off a list of its shortcomings
and disappointments, ranging from failures to find weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq to its oft-criticized response to Hurricane
Katrina.

A White House willing to admit to mistakes is one that will be more accountable. This sets the tone for the next eight years. We will hold Obama to that standard.

Proof denies faith
On Reddit, someone posted the following question: "What convinces you that the Quran is the literal Word of God?" I think this is precisely the wrong question.
The book/movie Life of Pi directly

Proud to be American, proud to be MuslimThis is a guest post by Safiya Dahodwala.
Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin TUS graced the land of America for the first time as the 53rd Dai (spiritual leader) of the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community. It has been nearly a decade since his predecessor, Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin bestowed his bountiful bl

is ISIS Islamic? Wrong question.There is an excellent longform essay on ISIS published in The Atlantic, "What does ISIS Really Want?" that lays out an excellent case fore ISIS being genuinely different in ideology, motivation and ethos than Al Qaeda. The real question boils down to, is ISIS "Islamic" or not - and makes an excellen

The Price of ExtremismThis is a guest post by Durriya Badani.
The execution style murder of three young North Carolina students, two of whom were hijab wearing Muslim women, raises questions regarding the rise of Islamaphobia in the United States in the form of hate crimes. Some will argue that the motive for the inc

About City of Brass

City of Brass by Aziz Poonawalla approaches issues from the perspective of a Muslim of the West. Aziz, a member of the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community, has been blogging since early 2003 and co-founded the Brass Crescent Awards for the muslim blogsphere.